What happens to the house in Brixton that Mum and Dad bought in the 1960s? For many Lambeth families of Caribbean, West African, Portuguese and Irish origin that is the question behind every will, and without one the intestacy rules decide, and decide badly. They give nothing to an unmarried partner, nothing to stepchildren, and they ignore the child who moved back in to care for a parent. A Victorian house in Brixton, Stockwell or Clapham that cost a few thousand pounds is now worth enough to put an estate well over the inheritance tax threshold, and a will solicitor in Lambeth will have seen every version of the argument that follows.
A proper will names executors, deals with property here and abroad, and is witnessed correctly, which home-made wills so often get wrong. Where there is a house in Jamaica, Ghana, Portugal or Ireland as well as one in Lambeth, a solicitor will usually recommend separate wills for each country, drafted so that one does not revoke the other. Trusts can protect a share of the house for children of a first marriage while a second spouse lives in it.
Lasting powers of attorney matter as much as wills for older residents in Streatham, West Norwood and Tulse Hill: one for money, one for health, registered while the person still has capacity, so that the family does not later face the Court of Protection. After a death the same firms obtain the grant of probate, deal with HMRC and distribute the estate; executors who do it themselves carry the risk personally.
Wills and LPAs are normally fixed-fee; for probate, ask whether the charge is hourly or a percentage of the estate.
Lambeth's will and probate firms are listed below, verified first. Start with wills, trusts and probate, then what a will costs, what probate costs, what a lasting power of attorney is and the general will solicitors page.
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